Our cat

November 18, 2005

We have two pets, a cat named Lady Socks and a dog name Charley. Both were strays, and both were small when we acquired them, but I’ll mention how I got roped into that another time. For this post, I wanted to mention something I noticed today: I call the dog by his name, but the cat’s just “cat.” I started wondering why that might be, and I think I’ve come up with the answer. See, Charley, being a dog, is happy with letting us name him and call him whatever we want. Charley epitomizes the old expression “you can call me whatever you want as long as you call me for dinner.”

The cat, however, wouldn’t come when you called her if she was the one who provided the birth certificate with her name spelled out. She certainly isn’t going to answer to some name we came up with, and as she hates me, she wouldn’t come when I called her if I was an open can of tuna fish.

Now, she may have reason to hate me just from the number of times I’ve either stepped on her tail or caught it in the door (all accidental, I assure you). But I think she hates me for more “catly” reasons. She, like most cats, thinks herself better than we mere humans. On the rare occasion when I’m sitting watching TV and wouldn’t mind having the cat sit in my lap, she gives me this aloof look that suggests I’m not worthy to pet the hairs that grow on her beautiful back. Doesn’t matter what I use for bait, she can ignore me.

However . . . .

Years ago I bought the kids a laser pointer, back when these things were the rage. We still have one lying around, and from time to time I break it out. Thing is, I can tell the cat hates that she chases the little red dot across the floor, but she can’t help herself. She’s like me when it comes to the leftover Halloween candy; try as she might she can’t resist. I’ll run her up a couple of walls, around the fire place hearth, and so forth, and she’ll finally decide she’s above all this and start to walk away. But I’ll jiggle that dot near where she’s walking and you can see her strain to resist, crumble, let out a cat-curse, and start chasing it again. Aloofness is shot, disdain be darned, she runs slobbering after that red dot like a crack head after a free fix. When I finally get tired of the game and she gets to slink off in shame, she usually pauses to give me this one last look of pure cat evil. I know the chink in her armor, and she hates me for it. I find that amusing . . . but I sleep with the bedroom door closed, and the cat on the other side.